Hi David, he started as a blogger. If you google The rantings of a sandmonkey you will find him. He was anonymous for 6 years but after arrested he went public. And he was one of the major social media forces behind the revolution.

He dropped the one-state solution 'prophecy' out of nowhere yesterday at the conference so he hasn't really elaborated yet. Except for the caviat that if Iran falls then by the end of 2011 we will see a one-state solution. And I expect him to say something more detailed soon. He was in Geneva today and yesterday and I got to spend some time with him. Warm person. I can say he's someone impressive that I admire. Your question is a question I received a lot these couple of days: but how exactly does he think it can happen? So, let's stay tuned.

thanks for this interesting post. here's a quick interview with him talking about the usefulness of facebook and social networking and how they facilitate the translation of individual discontent into a common consensus that results in positive mass action. nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFm7lCMEzzk

by the way guys, im organising a chomsky group if you would be interested. here's a nice article from the man himself as regards what's happening at the moment in the arab world...

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20110204.htm

''It's not radical Islam that worries the US -- it's independence''

noam chomski is a great one to speak 

he has done nothing but criticise Israel and ignores the importance 

of israel at rehoming refugees who had no basic human rights for centuries 

because of their religion and the fact that he himself was born to the jewish 

tribe makes him the biggest back stabbing hypocrite know it all idiot i know 

It's easy for him to criticise the US let him criticise the real bad guys 

the rich oil countries who have everyone bowing down to them 

and thus attacking israel 

He is a night mare though i studied his linguistic theories in undergraduate 

and it seems he was a bright fellow before he bacame a self hating jew 

what i worry about is that people like noam chomsky distract attention from the real issues the violence of extreme Islam 

i dont for a minute generalize islam but the dominant force that hands 

out candy after a three months old baby girl has her throat cut by monsters 

criticise Hamas noam chomsky not the western world 

the distortion distracts and we cant afford not to keep our eyes on these

radical extremists religious nut cases

look at gaddafi and dont compare him to merkel  

the problem of the Islam world is people like that blogger would have their throat cut like that three months old baby girl if they dared to speak out in Gaza or anywhere where hamas rules 

I would like noam chomsky to try to speak from gaza and criticise the US there 

i would like people who criticise the west to try to do the same for ONE minute 

in gaza 

oh that's getting a bit nasty! but it just so happens that i like nasty:o)

first off 'real bad guys' are, sadly, not identifable by their nationality. chomsky haters always like to skip over the first and most important principle that underpins every argument he makes. i'm going to explain it to you star because i'm sure you're a sweet lady at heart.

we, as people, can only be held accountable for the choices and actions we make. the reason chomsky focuses a lot of energy on US and Western foreign policy is precisely because we, as citizens of those states, are involved in the production, legitimisation and execution of those policies. we cannot be held directly accountable in the same way for the crimes of foreign criminals.

final point. the term 'self hating jew' is one of the ugliest and cheapest remarks anyone can make. by attempting to deny chomsky's humanity you only succeed in putting your own in jeopardy. beware little star, once you start down the path of hate you'll eventually find yourself making some very strange and ugly bedfellows. i'll leave it there. i wish you well.

ok manics, you made a good point

yes, the term i used is usually insider jargon, in other words, what you can say about your own people but other people cant..the rule being i can mock my own mother but you cant..

i still think it would be nice and decent not to bite the hand that feeds you

or some fairness to the good things that are happening in western society

like first of all we are FREE

in more ways than not

i know this is way out of line but i just recall the scene from "sex and the city 2" that great film where the blond that sleeps around is caught making out by the police 

I mean yes we should criticise our own societies for sure but what about 

proportion and what about realising the good values that there are in western socieities, 

surely you or noam can think of one or two 

you have to know the history in order to appreciate why i dont like jewish people who criticise Israel 

It is so ungrateful as israel offered a home to millions of misplaced jews who were kicked out of europe or arab lands where they had to leave or die 

so i dont really think noam is appreciating the roots of his people and the fact

that not all jews can or want to live in the US

For me a man who criticise israel so harshly and is of jewish heritage is very ungrateful for the role israel played in offering a refuge place from antisemitism and genocide

it is still a safe haven in case the right wing parties  in europe take over

which seems only a question of time 

star: may i say that i thoroughly enjoyed the video that you posted on Irène Némirovsky in the book reading post. 

back to your points on noam: chomsky goes out of his way to point out that his parents were extremely lucky to have found a safe home in America (many of the family who didn't make it were murdered by anti-semites).

i think it's clear that you are an intelligent person who, as you point out yourself, simply hasn't read chomsky's politics. no big deal about that. but all the answers to your perfectly rational questions have already been answered by the man himself in his writing. so before you lament what you believe to be his pessimistic political philosophy, or criticise his imagined lack of patriotism you might like to actually read his books. did you know for example that his vision of a perfect society, which he has repeated in countless interviews, is founded upon the Israeli kibbutz system. Let me say that again, Chomsky, whom you labelled a 'self hating jew' maintains Israel as a culture and country holds the secret in its history to the attainment of a truly beautiful and egalitarian society for the entire world. so you see, he really is not the monster some people paint him to be.

so yep have a quick read of some of his books. i honestly believe you'll be wonderfully surprised. my impression is that someone has done you a vicious disservice by telling you absolute nonsense about chomsky. but whatever you do don't take my word for it (or anyone else's): read the stuff yourself and make up your own mind. thinking critically for yourself - now that's what chomsky is all about.

great talking to you.

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/the-new-zionist-imperative-is-to-tell-israel-the-truth

I

david: thank you for remembering all the people involved in the middle-eastern conflict. it sounds so childish but it is true, no one, Israeli or Palestinian deserves what has in fact happened to normal Israelis and Palestinans.

as regards your second point about this kind of topic being unsuitable for glocals i would very respectfully disagree. i completely understand how certain langauge can be so off-putting that it just makes you want to stop reading a post. believe i've been there! but again and again and again i have found that these instances of hateful language arise from a passive acceptance by people of very negative cultural memes rather than being the result of a concious decision to say something hateful. the point i am very clumsily making is that posts like these operate as a neutral space where people with different world views can sit down together in a civil manner and compare their reasoning. in such a context reason will always win out. so i think it's lovely to have these kinds of posts on glocals and everywhere else in life. 

but naturally that is just my opinion and i wouldn't dream of being so arrogant as to suppose my opinion was somehow more worthy than yours.

peace out and see you saturday for some beers, manics and guitar chat! can't wait!!! come on ireland!

By DAVID ZLUTNICK

From January 24th to February 19th Dr. Hajo Meyer traveled through twelve cities in the US as well as Toronto on a speaking tour titled "Never Again for Anyone," discussing his own experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust and his perceptions of Zionism and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. For more information about the tour you can visit www.NeverAgainForAnyone.com.

Dr. Meyer sat down with me for a video interview before the last stop of the tour in Los Angeles. You can view an 8 minute edited selection of the video here. What follows is an edited transcription of part of the interview.

Los Angeles, February 19, 2011--

DZ: Could you start by introducing yourself, stating your name and giving a bit of background about yourself?

HM: My name is Hajo Meyer, I was born in August 1924 in Beilefeld, western Germany. And so I am 86 years old. And I had to leave Germany in January 1939 because from November 1938 on I was not allowed to go to school anymore. When in the Netherlands I made my entrance examination to the university still under the German occupation. They allowed that for Jews to be done. Even the German occupation allowed it, under a special setting of Jewish state examination. It occurred in April '43. Then I went underground and about a year later I was caught and brought to Auschwitz and survived 10 months in Auschwitz.

Could you summarize this idea that you've often spoken and written about, the "ethical tradition of Judaism?"

So now we come to a very important point. In my view—I was educated in the tradition of enlightened Reform Judaism, without any relation to the prescripts of Halacha [Jewish religious law] but just to the socio-cultural heritage and the enlightened parts of Judaism…

This ethical tradition is absolutely contrary to everything which is at the basis of Zionism. Because Zionism was created by Mr. [Theodor] Herzel and others at the end of the 19th Century, and in that era it was commonplace to be colonialist, to be racist, to be super-nationalist, to adore the nation-state--so the idea of France for the French, Germany for the Germanics, and then some state for the Jews. This all formed the basis for Zionism.

Zionism and Judaism are contrary to each other. Because Judaism is universal and humane, and Zionism is exactly the opposite. It is very narrow, very nationalistic, racist, colonialist, and all this. There is no "National Judaism." There is Zionism and there is Judaism, and they are completely different.

[Zionism] has nothing to do with Judaism. Because Judaism, as I learned it--the Reform Movement--that is highly, highly ethical. And so, you cannot connect Zionism with "highly ethical." You can only connect the words "aggressive," "oppressive," "stealing," "robbing" with Zionism. But not "highly ethical."

Inter-human ethics is a product of evolution. So we have a center in our brain that gives us the feeling of empathy so if we see someone suffer we get the impulse, "Can I help you?" That is a very important insight that I saw in Auschwitz—that if a dominant group wants to dehumanize others, so as the Nazis wanted to dehumanize me, this dominant group must first be dehumanized in a way themselves by diminishing their empathy due to propaganda and indoctrination to enable them to be as cruel as some were. But the same holds nowadays for [Israel's propaganda and dehumanization].

You, of course, saw first-hand how a populace can be manipulated to dehumanize another population through your own experiences of persecution. And as you just alluded to, you've compared the way Zionist ideology and its "us vs. them" mentality is fostered in Israel to what you witnessed in 1930s and '40s fascist Europe. Can you explain?

This fact has been documented by at least--I know two impressive documents. One is by Shulamit Aloni who was once Minister of Education in Israel [explaining] how hateful, how racist, how depreciating the school books in Israel talk about the Palestinians. And Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who is a pedagogue in the University of Tel Aviv, has made a big study of the school books and she's appalled by the racism which is taught to children in Israel.

And then you get, nowadays, the rabbis--especially the Army rabbis--get evermore aggressive and tell the soldiers it's a mitzvah, so it's your duty to kill every Palestinian you see… They are so aggressive. They are so racist. And look, it's so--I am appalled, I am deeply appalled how hateful, how dehumanized [they are] that they do not see any human aspect in any Palestinian anymore. It's terrible.

You've spoken and written that you identify with Palestinian youth living under the Israeli occupation. In what ways do you find yourselves similar?

Well, in that they are very often held up at checkpoints, or they are not allowed to move from one place to another, or their teachers are not allowed to do that… And so very often they cannot get the education they want, and that is terrible.

And I think that fact of my life [the initial denial of the right to education] has been a very important one, because it made me very--if you are not allowed to get an education you do your utter best to go against the forces which made you stop education, and so you search for education. And I learned to get an education by myself for years and eventually had a very high education and was very successful professionally. But it gave me also the idea that preventing people--young people who are eager to learn--from getting an education is a form of genocide. Because if you cannot realize your own ambitions because your access to education is made impossible then you cannot develop your personality, and that is a form of slow-motion genocide. And that's where my great sympathy and my connection to the Palestinian youth comes from, because I suffered. I think they suffer from exactly that. They very, very often--more often than not--cannot get the education they want and I think that is absolutely murderous.

Besides that, I mean look, I was a refugee and many of them come from refugee homes and are refugees. So we have very much in common, yes.

What were your thoughts of the 1948 War and the founding of the Israeli State at the time?

At that time I still believed more or less the propaganda lies from the Israeli side. I mean, the real eye-opener, how it happened for me--I'm afraid it was quite late--especially about the '48 war, was Ilan Pappé's work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Before that--Look, they have such a strong propaganda machine that it takes you a hell of a lot of study and knowledge and travel to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to see what the reality is. So it took me quite awhile. I mean I started to get critical with Begin and Sharon, and Sabra and Shatila, etc. and then my eyes started to open. So it took me quite awhile.

So it sounds like for several decade you were believing—

I was believing their stories, their lies, yes.

How do you see the holocaust being represented--or misrepresented--in the Zionist narrative?

The Zionists have not any right whatsoever to use the Holocaust for any purpose because they consider people like me--they talked about us as "useless human material." So, first of all I'm not useless. And secondly, I am human, but I am not material. So I feel deeply, deeply--I could feel if I did not despise these people who use such words so much, I could feel offended…

And like Netanyahu did the other day in the General Assembly of the United Nations, he used the number on my arm--or the number on our arms--to defend a coming attack on Iran. They have nothing to do with each other…

[Zionists] have given up everything that has to do with humanity, with empathy, for one thing: the state. The "blood and soil," just like the Nazis. I learned in school about blood and soil, and that's exactly their idea, too.

Critics of Israel are often accused of anti-Semitism, and Jewish critics are often labeled as "self-hating Jews." You've had these accusations leveled against you. What is your response?

The journalist who reports from Berlin for the Jerusalem Post, I think it's Mr. [Weinthal], he has a spotlight on me. So I have the honor of being quoted as an anti-Semite or whatever in the Jerusalem Post, and I cannot get higher honors than to be one of the people like Jimmy Carter, or Noam Chomsky, or Norman Finkelstein, and former [Dutch] Prime Minister Dries van Agt. So I'm very proud to be an anti-Semite.

Because formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and due to their Jewish nature and their race… Nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by a certain type of Zionist. Like one of the important Nazi leaders, Göring, said, "I determine who is a Jew." And so the Zionists determine who is an anti-Semite. And as I say, I'm proud to be one of those.

There is a famous image of Israeli Air Force bombers flying over Auschwitz. Have you seen this photograph?

I haven't seen it but I've read about it quite recently.

What feelings does it envoke in you?

Well, this belongs to the misuse of the fate which the Nazis had reserved for us... I'll tell you one thing, in many Israeli schools before they finish school, the kids are taken to Auschwitz. And Idith Zertal, who is an Israeli-Jewish historian, wrote a book called [Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood]. And she writes there about this visit to Auschwitz and she says these young people are taken to Auschwitz in order to instill in them love for their country. And also, to take away the good feelings they might get when they have to perform the tasks this state will ask from them, sooner or later, when they are soldiers of the occupation.

And finally, do you see any hope of salvaging the tradition of ethical Judaism in the future?

HM: Look David, to be quite honest, I wonder if there is much future for Judaism. Because one of my great fears... The Israelis—the Zionists—if they have the slightest chance to go down as a country they will take the whole world with them. They don't give a damn about the world. The only thing they give a damn about is this Zionist state, Israel, and nothing else. And they don't care if the Jews go down, because they have nothing to do with these Jews who live elsewhere and don't want to come to their blessed and paradisaical country called Israel.

David Zlutnick is a documentary filmmaker living and working in San Francisco. His latest project is called Occupation Has No Future: Militarism + Resistance in Israel/Palestine (2010), a feature documentary that studies Israeli militarism, examines the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, and explores the work of Israelis and Palestinians organizing against militarism and occupation. You can view his work at www.UpheavalProductions.com.

http://www.alanhart.net/hart-of-the-matter-2-professor-ilan-pappe-1/

http://www.alanhart.net/hart-of-the-matter-9-norman-finkelstein/

http://www.alanhart.net/

More selfhating Jews: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

http://www.alanhart.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlomo_Sand

Israel Shamir: 

http://counterpunch.org/shamir03142011.html

Hajo Meyer http://counterpunch.org/zlutnick03112011.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajo_Meyer

Reads like a list of UnAmericans!

Egypt, the American Way

By GREGORY ELICH

In Egypt, a people's uprising has succeeded in removing Hosni Mubarak from power. The main battle, however, lies ahead. Will there be a substantive transformation of Egyptian society, or will the economic and political system remain essentially unchanged, with only a new face occupying the presidential office? There are powerful forces that are determined to steer events in the latter direction.

While many in the Egyptian middle class, fed up with the corrupt rule of Mubarak, may be content to see the establishment of formal  electoral democracy, the poor of Egypt hope for genuine economic and political change. Their grievances are many.

Mubarak's adoption of the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program in 1991, at the urging of the IMF and World Bank, had predictable consequences. Off to a relatively slow start, privatization of state enterprises began to accelerate ten years into the program. Social benefits were cut in accordance with neoliberal principles. Passage of the Unified Labor Law in 2003 targeted unions and the rights of workers. It permitted workers to be hired on temporary contracts that could be renewed at will by management. The advantage for employers is that a worker on temporary contract is not allowed to join a union or vote in union elections. The law did away with the practice of granting permanent employment to workers once they passed a probationary period. Limits were also placed on collective bargaining and the right to strike. (1)

As has been the case elsewhere in the world, privatization of state-owned enterprises resulted in mass layoffs. For example, more than 65 percent of the workforce was eliminated at the six ESCO textile mills. And at the Assiut Cement Company, about 77 percent of workers lost their jobs. Special Economic Zones were established, offering tax and legal concessions to investors. At many factories located in these zones, workers are required to sign undated resignation letters as a condition of employment, allowing companies to swiftly and easily dismiss workers involved in union activities. (2)

The net effect of the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program and the Unified Labor Law has been to concentrate ever more wealth in the hands of the few, while driving great numbers of people into poverty. According to World Bank figures, 44 percent of Egypt's population survive on less than $320 a year. (3)

U.S. corporations have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo in Egypt. That nation ranks as the second largest market for foreign direction investment in Africa, and the United States is its primary foreign direct investor. Egypt is an attractive destination for foreign investment, as its textile workers earn less than half the pay of their counterparts in Tunisia, and about a third of the pay of those in Morocco and Turkey.....http://counterpunch.org/elich03222011.html